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If You’re Recycling, You’re Wasting Your Time
The Corner - National Review ^ | 10-19-15 | David French

Posted on 10/19/2015 6:40:24 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin

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To: Axenolith

The “Pig in the sink!”

Funny. Never thought about it in that light but you are right.


81 posted on 10/20/2015 7:03:34 AM PDT by Grams A (The Sun will rise in the East in the morning and God is still on his throne.)
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To: alpo

You are looking at this in a world that stops at the walls of the glass factory. Yes, if a truck of crushed glass shows up at their door, it is cheaper for them to use than raw materials, but how did it get there?

It starts as a jelly jar. When I empty it out, I could put the cap back on and throw it in the trash...but if I recycle it, lid off, its most definitely is getting washed. Again, it doesn’t matter how hot the furnace is, or how much stuff it burns off within the walls of the factory...the average consumer is unaffected by that and only cares about the bugs the jar attracts, and will waste the energy used to purify, lift (into tanks), and heat water, for each and every jar.

Then, my jelly jar travels in my car to a dumpster...usually carried in a disposable plastic bag, made from petroleum. On average, I drive a mile total out of my way to recycle around 20 lb of jars, a hundredth of a ton...at 20 mpg and $2.15, that’s $10.75 a ton just for me to get the jars to the dumpster, almost half the cost of delivered sand, but there is still a long journey ahead for my jelly jar.

Next, the county (which subsidizes this operation by forcing people to pay extra on their trash bill), hauls that dumpster around 20 miles to a sorting facility. The glass is not yet crushed, and is essentially 90% or more air, by volume, making for very inefficient trucking. The sorting facility, btw, is at the landfill - so if this glass had been in the trash, this would be the end of its travels and energy input. And there is added convenience, since they probably throw the green glass in the landfill anyway.

Once sorted, that same uncrushed, and very inefficient to haul, glass is taken to a crushing factory. I’m in Kansas...the closest factory is in Texas. If waste glass is a commodity, it stands to reason that this factory pays the same amount for local glass as they do for my glass that travels around 800 miles. Once again, the taxpayers in my county artificially pay the freight and cover the loss.

Then the crushing factory imparts energy to the jar, to pulverize it. I work in land development and have worked with economic development organizations - so I know that placing an environmental label on a facility gets good tax breaks. If I owned a cullet factory in Ft Worth, I’d shop for a better tax deal in Dallas and move there. In other words, it is more likely than not that the crushing factory is subsidized with local (and sometimes state) tax breaks that artificially prop up the industry.

And finally, the factory ships the crushed glass to the glass factory...probably a fairly short drive, but still requiring energy.

It is near impossibly to run the numbers on this...but I strongly suspect that the energy needed to do all this far exceeds the energy needed to suck some sand out of a hole and barge it to a glass factory...and if the market were unaltered by subsidies, this would be reflected in dollars as well. If there were a genuine market for this, I would get money for my jelly jars.


82 posted on 10/20/2015 7:08:19 AM PDT by lacrew
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To: Revolutionary

How would you find that out?


83 posted on 10/20/2015 7:33:59 AM PDT by Patriotic1 (Dic mihi solum facta, domina - Just the facts, ma'am)
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To: catnipman

Bravo!


84 posted on 10/20/2015 7:40:08 AM PDT by Patriotic1 (Dic mihi solum facta, domina - Just the facts, ma'am)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin
A friend and her two teens were visiting last Christmas and I opened a can of something and then threw the can in the trash. One of the teens gasped and whispered frantically to her mom, "Mom! Mrs meowmeow doesn't...recycle!"

The way both teens looked at me, you'd think they found a stash of dead puppies in my fridge. Their mom just rolled her eyes at them and told them to shush, this was Mrs meowmeow's house and she can do what she wants!

At some point, I'm sure my friend and I will be hauled off to the re-education camps.

85 posted on 10/20/2015 7:51:13 AM PDT by meowmeow (In Loving Memory of Our Dear Viking Kitty (1987-2006))
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To: kidd
Aluminum makes sense to recycle

I don't believe it does, otherwise there would be companies willing to pay you for your scrap aluminum.

The only thing that "makes sense" is for the government to force millions of people to waste time (labor) sorting the aluminum, then take some of my money and give it to companies willing to haul it, then give the scrap away to companies willing to recycle it, after giving them tax breaks and incentives using yet more of my money.

In that sense... it make sense :-)

86 posted on 10/20/2015 9:50:03 PM PDT by mwilli20 (BO. Making communists proud all over the world.)
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To: mwilli20

“... otherwise there would be companies willing to pay you for your scrap aluminum”

There are and they do.

It is many times more costly to produce aluminum from ore than to melt down existing aluminum. It is a deeply electricity-intensive process. Essentially, it takes a medium sized power plant to refine bauxite ore to aluminum.

It is the only clear example of where recycling does make sense.


87 posted on 10/21/2015 6:37:50 AM PDT by kidd
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To: Diana in Wisconsin
25 years ago when my oldest son was in grade school, I caught him looking through the various "recycling" bags under the kitchen sink. "What are you doing?" I asked. "My teacher asked us to find out if our parents are recycling and report back." "What?" I took all the bags, plastic, glass, paper and put them all in one bag and handed it to him to take out to the garbage can, and told him, "Now go tell your teacher that I do NOT recycle, what is she going to do about it?"

Never recycled another piece of garbage again, happy about it too.

88 posted on 10/21/2015 6:48:55 AM PDT by thirst4truth (America, What difference does it make?)
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To: thirst4truth

EnviroNazis stop at nothing, do they? And they LOVE to exploit and indoctrinate our kids.

We, too, had a LOT of discussions over the dinner table about what our boys were being ‘taught’ in school.

It was maddening.


89 posted on 10/21/2015 7:10:50 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin (I don't have 'Hobbies.' I'm developing a robust Post-Apocalyptic skill set...)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

See, it is easy to brainwash people into thinking they are “doing something”. I have wealthy, older neighbors that were excited to know the new trash company would recycle. They suck at math and never figured if their 2 pounds of plastic recycling would take more energy to recycle it than to simply toss it. They never educated themselves on the real costs and processes of dumps. Nope, they just got told throughout the 60’s and 70’s that recycling would save the planet and that the planet needed saving. Arrogance.


90 posted on 10/21/2015 7:30:06 AM PDT by CodeToad (Stupid kills, but not nearly enough!)
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To: kidd

“Aluminum makes sense to recycle”

Only if it is in large quantities. A few pounds or ounces of aluminum are not energy efficient.


91 posted on 10/21/2015 7:31:54 AM PDT by CodeToad (Stupid kills, but not nearly enough!)
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To: Hot Tabasco

“I AM in favor of deposits on bottles and cans “

Why?? If it isn’t wroth it to anyone, why tax it?


92 posted on 10/21/2015 7:32:51 AM PDT by CodeToad (Stupid kills, but not nearly enough!)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

He is 34 now, has a family and is not recycling, he still remembers what I did that day.


93 posted on 10/21/2015 9:22:36 AM PDT by thirst4truth (America, What difference does it make?)
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To: CodeToad
Why?? If it isn’t wroth it to anyone, why tax it?

Just like the rest of the trash you see blowing around, if it isn't worth anything nobody is willing to pick it up.

Give the plastic water bottles value then somebody will........

94 posted on 10/21/2015 9:28:57 AM PDT by Hot Tabasco (<i>)
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To: kidd

It’s true that the “refinement” costs are significantly lower for recycling but the “exploration and production” costs for recycling are significantly higher.

So if you could build the plant right next to the aircraft graveyards in Arizona for example, yes then it would be beneficial, but even then you need to wonder, if recycling is so much cheaper, why are there still planes in graveyards?

If you look at the numbers it’s obvious why this is the case. 1kg of newly refined aluminum requires about 75c - $1 in electricity to refine and even with that the total market cost for 1kg is about $1.50.

Those costs are so low that they can be easily clobbered by an inefficient collection mechanism. Just as an example, if I have to drive 10 miles each way to the collection point and I do it every time I collect 1Kg of household aluminum I have blown $2.50 in just gas costs alone! Not to speak of the wasted time in driving, separating/washing and storing that junk.

Recycling anything including aluminum only makes sense if you fool a number of people to subsidize your logistical collections costs.


95 posted on 10/22/2015 8:59:53 PM PDT by mwilli20 (BO. Making communists proud all over the world.)
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